by ALEXANDER BIGGS-TUFTS-MANN, Alternate Reality News Service Sports Writer
The Flyers and Jets have been permanently grounded. The Maple Leafs have fallen and can’t get up. The Coyotes have been hunted to extinction. The Wild have been tamed. The Lightning have been grounded (but, in a different sense than the Flyers and Jets). The Kings have suffered a revolution and been deposed. The Flames have been doused and the Devils have faced the Inquisition and repented.
On Friday at 10:37 am est, all hockey fans had an epiphany: that it was just a game and that it really was unimportant in the great scheme of things.
People reacted in different ways to the epiphany. “Poker night with the boys was kind of…weird,” allowed paper sheet worker Hurt Locker Debussy. “We didn’t have the latest games to argue about, so we eventually started talking about our feelings. It was beyond weird – it was…awkweird. Next week, we’re going to hire a facilitator to make poker night conversation easier.”
“To be honest with you, it was a relief,” said itinerant barstool sweeper Sidney Blatsturmond. “I apologized to my wife, Semantyc, for not being there when she needed me, or didn’t need me, or at all, really, and I started spending time with my children. They’re 14 and 12 – when did that happen? And, the best part? With the thousands of dollars I’m going to save every year, we can actually have a family vacation. Atikokan, here we come!”
“No, no, I…I still love the Habs,” said Philippe Felardoh, who refused to divulge his occupation in English. “They’re the winningest team in organized sports and…and…and – now what am I supposed to do with my life?” He got out his knitting needles and, curling up on a comfortable couch with a nice cuppa on the table next to him, settled in for a furious think.
Former hockey fans did have one thing in common, though: they all demanded refunds for their tickets for the remainder of the season. “Not a problem,” insisted league poobah Gary Bettman. “We’ll just expand into…Peoria. Or…or, Mexico. Yeah. Mexico. I’ll bet they’d just love hockey in Nogales!”
The season had to be canceled. You might expect this to result in lawsuits, but none of the players seemed to care to continuing playing. “Yeah, my career as a hockey enforcer is definitely over,” admitted Ottawa Senators goaltender Oskar Vindrokovitz. “It’s not all bad, though. My hockey experience should help me get a job with a Crimean drug lord.”
I’d love to see that job application!
The streets of Canada are free of ball hockey players for the first winter in memory. “I guess boys’ll go back to doing what they’ve always done when they didn’t have hockey to keep them occupied -” Bettman unenthusiastically commented, “playing games on the computer and stealing porn magazines from the local grocery store.”
Why is this happening? According to Bronald Darthelme, Chief Medical Officer at Carbine Steel and Fiduciary, “Sports is a virus that invades men’s brains, and civilization is the cure.” When we stated that the metaphor seemed obscure, Darthelme replied, “Metaphor? What metaphor? I’ve seen the sports virus using an electron microscope – it looks like Donald Duck, except his arms are sticking out of his head and he seems to have a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow where his right foot should be. His right foot, mind you – when it’s on his left foot, the virus causes men to lose interest in muscle cars.”
I thought it might be prudent to get a second opinion, so Darthelme added: “Your prose style is ornate and you have an uncertain grasp of narrative structure.” I meant an opinion from another medical professional, so Darthelme put on a dress and declared himself to be Floridia Devine, a nurse in the emergency florist’s shop at Mount Arachnid General Hospital.
“You’re trying to medicalize something that is not physical,” Devine advised. “Maybe sports adulation was part of the nightmare of the twentieth century out of which we are finally awakening. Perhaps it’s the onset of the Age of Aquarius. There are no drugs that can affect this condition…although if you want a little something to take the edge off, talk to me about it after the interview…”
Hockey is not the first sport men have lost interest in: baseball, basketball and lacrosse (yes, it’s a real sport – look it up!) have already gone through this crisis. Could football (either American, European or Mongolian) be next? “I’m polishing up my resume just to be safe,” said Toronto Argonaut moneyback Sam Diddley.
It is sad to think that future generations of Canadian boys will grow up with a complete lack of understanding of the film Slap Shot. It is sadder still to think that they will get excited by the sportsmanship in the film Men With Brooms.
Don Cherry was unavailable for comment. It was the first, and likely last, time that this happened, so we decided to enjoy it.